"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Trump helped strengthen Israel's claim to facts

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesperson for the Hebron Jewish community globally, makes an excellent point in Newsweek why Donald Trump, as POTUS, helped Israel strenghten their claim on truthfulness:
First was Jerusalem. In 1995, Congress declared that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel." Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all continued to sign a waiver of the law, thwarting the will of the American people and blocking this simple and ancient truth. But on December 6, 2017, President Trump announced U.S. recognition and began planning the relocation of the American embassy. The U.S. would no longer tolerate the absurd lie that Jerusalem was not the capital—the very heart—of Israel.

Next was the reversal of the JCPOA, to the relief of Israelis, especially Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been the world's leading advocate against Iranian aggression. On May 8, 2018, the U.S. officially withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran. The lie that the Iranian mullahs' regime was anything other than a leading sponsor of global terrorism was exposed and rejected.

Then there was the Trump administration's frontal attack on endemic anti-Israelism at the UN. The key person here was then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who said at AIPAC: "It cannot be the case that in an organization with 193 countries, the United Nations spends half of its time attacking only one country. We will not accept it any longer." She called out the UN's Relief Work Agency, UNRWA—"It cannot be the case that only one set of refugees throughout the world is counted in a way that causes the number to grow forever." And she lambasted the UN's world heritage arm: "UNESCO recently declared one of Judaism's holiest sites, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as a Palestinian heritage site in need of protection from Israel. That was enough," she said. "Ten months into this administration, the United States withdrew from UNESCO." The truth that the UN is a home for rabid Israel-hate was laid bare for all to see.

Another milestone was the recognition of Jewish rights in Judea—Israel's ancestral heartland. One of my most vivid memories was hearing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announce that "the Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration's approach towards Israeli settlements. ...The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law." Pompeo subsequently declared that products coming from Jewish communities in Judea (i.e., the "West Bank") would be officially marked as "Made in Israel." The lie that Jews are foreign occupiers in Judea was finally challenged.

Then came the Taylor Force Act, which defunded the Palestinian Authority and their $303 million yearly stipends to terror perpetrators and the families of so-called "martyrs." Similarly, in 2018, President Trump also shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission in Washington. The murderous deceptions of PA-PLO were no longer tolerated.

The Dream Team and the Grand Slam

All these lie-busting policies led to the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration's brokered détente between Israel and the Islamic states of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. This, in turn, debunked the myth that Israel had to cede land to the PLO before there could be any broader regional normalization with the Jewish state. Once the region understood that the U.S. was no longer playing both sides, but was instead simply standing up for what was right, there was an unprecedented regional realignment. As David Weinberg wrote in The Jerusalem Post, the Abraham Accords "will prove to be the [Trump] administration's ultimate foreign policy legacy."
Whether the Biden administration returns to the opposite when it comes to issues like the UN and such, it will not be so easy for them now that some of these policies were established, like the US embassy's move to Jerusalem, and the Abraham Accords. The MSM can try, but they won't be able to obscure these important achievements so easily. Topics like the Abraham Accords will hopefully win out.

Update: see also Dr. Miriam Adelson's thank you to Trump on behalf of Israel.

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